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Snack

Devilled Almonds

A snack of almonds fried in clarified butter or oil, seasoned with salt and cayenne pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Almond and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,245 recipes. Both carry 2,3-pentanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Devilled Almonds

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Blanch the almonds and dry them in the oven at 350°F (175°C) without browning.

Fry

  1. Fry the almonds in clarified butter or oil until they are light brown.

Season and serve

  1. Drain the almonds slightly, then place them on a towel sprinkled with salt and cayenne pepper.

  2. Toss the almonds lightly in the towel and serve crisp.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Almond + buttertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,245 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

  2. Almond + peppertop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,566 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Almonds
Form the crunchy base that the salt and cayenne cling to.
Clarified butter or salad oil
Conducts heat for frying, promotes browning and gives a crisp, golden coating.

The step that matters

Fry until light brown only. Almonds keep cooking from their own residual heat after leaving the hot fat, and their sugars darken quickly. Removing them at light brown prevents bitter, over-browned nuts and keeps the coating crisp.

Swap the almond

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, pepper):

  1. Walnutfits about as well
  2. Black-eyed peafits about as well
  3. Almondthe original
  4. Lima beansfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, pepper. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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